


Sentimental Circus

by oppisum



Series: Polyamory & Pizza ‘verse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Human, Atmospheric, Bohemian Castiel, Domestic, M/M, Polyamory, Professor Castiel, Queer Themes, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6184213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oppisum/pseuds/oppisum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months. Two months since Sam first fell into a polyamorous relationship with his brother and his bohemian former professor. It’s only been two months and already his definitions “home” and “family” are morphing into Dean’s records echoing through Cas’s house and Cas’s scent on Sam’s clothes.</p>
<p>
  <i>Or, in which coffee doesn’t just come from a drip machine, Cas insists relationship negotiations are necessary, and Dean really just wants this conversation to be over.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sentimental Circus

[8tracks Part Soundtrack](https://8tracks.com/oppisum/sentimental-circus-polyamory-pizza) | [Tumblr Tag](http://oppisum.tumblr.com/tagged/polyamoryandpizza) | [8tracks Verse Soundtrack](https://8tracks.com/oppisum/sins-of-my-youth-polyamory-pizza#smart_id=dj:4383258)

Sam drifts back to wakefulness by parts. The first thing he becomes aware of is the comfortable warmth spooned against his chest. He tightens his arm without opening his eyes and buries his nose against the hair in front of him.

The familiar warm scent of leather and motor oil tells him it’s Dean he’s cuddling like an oversized teddy bear. Instinctively, Sam flings out an arm to feel for Cas, but he’s unsurprised to find the sheets long cold. The older man has the disgusting habit of getting up at seven, leaving his lovers to sleep.

Sam reluctantly opens his eyes. The curtains are open, and sun streams in through a large bay window, coating the entire room in the warm glow of spring sun. Dean gives a disgruntled huff at all the movement and burrows deeper into the Egyptian cotton sheets.

Cas’ bed totally counts as one of the perks of staying over at his house. It’s bigger and more extravagantly comfortable than the queen in the Winchester’s rental. Sam is amazed the three of them ever manage to have sex on Dean’s bed without falling off. Besides, unlike Dean, Cas is the kind of man who cares about his thread counts.

Sam rolls onto his back, hauling his brother with him. Dean goes willingly and lets himself be arranged against Sam’s chest. He melts into Sam’s embrace, still pliant and warm and half-asleep. He cracks his eyes open to peer blearily up at Sam.

“Mornin’,” he says, slurring the word into a four syllable lilt. One hand comes up to brush the hair out of Sam’s face.

“Good morning,” Sam says, his smile still sleep-soft around the edges.

He’s spent the past month and a half waiting for Dean to freak out, but so far his brother has surprises him. The guilty “we shouldn’t”s have been kept to a minimum, only appearing when Dean is worn down both physically and emotionally from work. Sam’s been learning how to combat that, learning how to sweep his thumb over his brother’s wrist and whisper a soft “We’re okay; trust me,” as he noses along his stubbled jawline.

The real test came the first morning they woke up together tangled with Castiel in sex scented sheets. Dean extracted himself shakily with a muttered “bathroom”. Once ten minutes crawled past, Sam got up to go look for him only to find him perched on the edge of Sam’s bed with his face in his hands. Sam had knelt in front of his brother, unsure what to do and scared that he wouldn’t be able to fix what they’d broken.

He resolutely ignored the dampness on his brother’s palms when he pulled them away from his green eyes to press them to his own cheeks. He looked shame and misery and regret in the eye as his brother chanted “I’m sorry; I’m so sorry, Sammy,” over and over again. The pain of it stole Sam’s breath until breathing was a conscious effort.

Sam wanted to make it stop-- wanted to tell Dean that they could forget it, pretend it never happened and move on-- but he couldn’t. There was no turning back from what they’d done, no forgetting it. So instead he looked his brother in the eye and said, “I’m not.”

“What?” Dean croaked out in a hoarse voice.

“I’m not sorry,” Sam said. “I’m not sorry for what we did. I’m not sorry that I know what you feel like and what you taste like. I’m not sorry that I finally got to kiss you. Maybe we broke all the rules, but I don’t regret it.”

Sam leaned up, slow enough to give Dean time to back away. When their lips touched, it was dry and chaste, reassurance rather than intent.

And that didn’t fix everything, but maybe it was what Dean needed just then because he let Sam lead him back to the bedroom, let Sam guide him back into Cas’s waiting arms, let himself be enveloped once more in the warmth and safety of his lovers.

Cas left two days later, begging work and “an actual need to sleep instead of fucking.” Having spent the last two nights in Dean’s bed, Sam felt lonely going back to his own. Dean apparently agreed, because he fell asleep on the couch with Sam after pizza, fingers carding through Sam’s hair more gently than he knew possible.

They hadn’t slept apart since then. Sharing a bed was awkward at first without Cas there to soften the edges of their unusual desire, but by the third night on their own, Sam was able to sling an arm around Dean’s chest without him shying away. He knows they’ll need their space eventually, but for now, sleeping-- _just_ sleeping-- together is a comfort among the shifting landscape of their lives.

Dean thumps him lightly on the chest. “Yo, Earth to Sam. Do we have contact?”

“Huh?” Sam manages, shaking himself from his thoughts.

“You were in another galaxy, space boy,” Dean says. “What’s going on in that big head of yours?”

Sam wraps his arms tightly around Dean. “Not much. Just thinking about you.”

“I’m right here. There’s no need to think when you can have the real thing.” It’s a joke, Sam knows it is, but he wants so badly to accept. They haven’t shared anything more than light kisses without Cas there. And really, Sam’s not even sure how that fits into the rules of this-- whatever it is they’re doing. Extended threesome?

Dean nuzzles at the hollow below his ear, and Sam doesn’t cover the shiver that sends through him. He angles his head to kiss Dean, but Dean shies away. Sam has only a moment to feel hurt before Dean’s shaking his head, a small smile curving his lips.

“Dude, nothing personal, but I’m not going anywhere near your mouth until you brush your teeth,” he says. “Morning breath, I can handle. Dick breath, I can handle. Morning dick breath, not so mu--”

Sam wallops him with one of Cas’s obscenely soft pillows before he can finish.

Dean squawks indignantly, but Sam ignores him. Instead, he uses the distraction to get an arm around his middle and reel him in. He plants an unrepentantly sloppy kiss on Dean’s forehead. “Dude!” Dean protests. “Too early for all that girly shit.”

Sam grins as his brother pushes himself out of bed. He watches the perfect curve of his ass until it disappears beneath boxers-- the only thing Dean bothers to put on morning when the three of them have nowhere to be.

A record player that’s more old Bohemian than vintage antique sits on a three-legged table by the window. Slowly, more and more of Dean’s records have found their way to Cas’ collection. They look so much more at home among the batterer E. M. Forster novels and modern alternative records of Cas’s stacked milk crates than on the Walmart bookshelf of their rental house.

The night the the record migration first started, Sam had raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“His speakers are better,” Dean protested.

Now, skin tinted by the light filtering through the sheer curtains, Dean saunters over to the table and puts on _Rust Never Sleeps_ without hesitation _,_ and Sam knows he’s not the only one who feels at peace in Cas’s too-nice home. The first night they spent here, both brothers were careful not to touch more than they had to in the house where Moroccan rugs cover worn hardwood and all the dishes match.

But Cas’s insistence that he wouldn’t live in a house that wasn’t liveable had broken them of that soon enough. When Dean protested that “someone who spends most of their time covered in engine grease shoudn’t be in a place like this”, Cas had walked away silently, motioning for the brothers to follow.

He stopped in front of the sofa and wordlessly flipped over a brightly colored throw pillow to reveal a coffee stain. From there he moves on to the dining room, where he kicked back one corner of the rug to show a watermark discoloring the beautiful hardwood. The same followed until they covered every every room in the house-- a trash can covering a shattered tile in the bathroom; a glued-together mug in the kitchen; a wax stain in that shag carpet of the bedroom that Sam fervently hoped is from a poorly places decorative candle.

Finally, Cas turned to face them. “This house is meant to be lived in, Dean, not preserved like a museum.”

Even though it’s been less than two months, Cas’s house feels terrifyingly like home in the way only the Impala ever has. Three toothbrushes live on the bathroom counter, and Neil Young echoes softly through the speakers that line the whole house, the crackle of the old record soft and soothing in the warm morning.

Cas doesn’t look up from the papers he’s grading when they enter the kitchen, but a soft smile plays around the pen held between his lips. The plate of crumbs next to him says he’s already eaten, and the refolded New York Times means he’s been up since at least six.

“I see you’re finally awake,” he says. In his glasses and vest with the end of his pin resting sinfully on his bottom lip, he looks like a _Playgirl_ spread on fetishized professors. “There’s coffee in the coffee press.”

“You are a saint,” Dean all but moans. He brushes an affectionate hand across Cas’s shoulders as he heads straight for the coffee. He stares blankly at the French press like he’s considering drinking directly from it until Sam takes pity on him and pulls down mugs for them both.

Dean is still vaguely confused by anything that doesn’t come from a Mr. Coffee. The first day Cas made espresso in a stovetop percolator, Sam thought his brother was going to skip his daily caffeine dose out of sheer stubbornness.

With coffee in hand and the first sip in his mouth, Dean takes a good look at Cas for the first time that morning and stops mid-step. “Oh, no. You’ve got your serious face on. It’s too early for you to have your serious face on,” he says.

Cas rubs a hand under his glasses and takes a long breath. “I was hoping to wait until you had a cup of coffee in you, but I need to talk to both of you.”

Dean instantly tenses, and Sam’s own grip tightens around his mug. The past two months have been as close to perfect as they’ve ever known; Sam can’t help the paranoia that maybe the whole setup really is too good to be true.

It’s only been two months, and already Sam’s definitions of words like “home” and “family” are changing faster than he can keep up with. “Home” now includes Dean’s records echoing through Cas’s house, and “family” has become Dean’s head on his chest and Cas’s scent on his clothes.

Cas pushes his chair back from the table. “Guys, please quit looking at me like I’m going to take away your puppy. It’s a talk. Not a bad talk, just a relationship talk,” he says. “I know comunication physically pains you, but healthy relationships need it occasionally.”

Dean raises a sardonic eyebrow. “You call this a healthy relationship?”

Cas sighs, long suffering and too tired for ten AM. “This is exactly what we need to talk about,” he says. The near silent pad of his bare feet is achingly familiar for all that it’s so new. “Yes, I believe it can be-- if we set clear parameters and get you to move past the idea that this is something dirty.”

“In-cest,” Dean sing-songs flatly, and Sam thinks it says a lot that Dean can say the word without choking up now.

“Consensual incest,” Cas corrects. He leans up to kiss Sam on the cheek before pressing himself to Dean’s side, hands creeping across his bare stomach and thumb brushing teasingly over the elastic of his boxers.

Dean gives in and wraps his free hand around Cas’s slim waist. “I know. And I’m adjusting, I am. But you can’t expect a guy to not be a little fucked up over sleeping with his baby brother. I’m getting there; you just gotta give me time.”

“I understand,” Cas says against his ear. “And that’s not what I want to talk about.” He pats Dean on the chest and turns away to rinse his plate in the sink.

“We need to establish some ground rules,” Cas says over the running water.

“Like what?” Sam asks, slowly melting out of his tense state.

“Like,” Cas turns off the water and leans back against the farmhouse sink. “Is this a closed relationship? Can we be together in any arrangement without all parties present?”

Sam pushes himself up to sit on the L of the granite counter. “How’ve you done this in the past?” he asks.

“Each polyamorous relationship has its own dynamic. I haven’t been in a closed poly relationship before,” Cas admits. “But I wouldn’t be opposed to it. Especially not with the two of you.”

Dean snorts, and there’s actual humor there this time. “Why, because anyone else who found out about Sammy and I would flip their shit?”

“On the contrary, I imagine quite a few people would be-- _intrigued_ by your situation,” Cas says with a sly smirk that fades quickly. “I find myself wanting to keep the pair of you to myself. Perhaps it’s selfish and against the principals of polyamory, but for the first time in my life, I don’t want to share you or have anyone else myself.”

“Then there you go,” Dean says, ever the picture of emotional constipation. “There’s that settled. Talk over.”

“Dean,” Cas says in his ever-patient professor voice, “That’s not how this works. If that’s not what you two want, we need to discuss it.”

“I’ve got everything I could ever want.” Dean shrugs like it’s nothing, but there’s a raw honesty under the words that makes Sam’s chest swell.

Sam clears his throat past a sudden tightness. “I don’t want anyone else, either. I’d like it-- _I’d prefer it_ if it was just the three of us, whatever the threesome equivalent of monogamy is.”

Cas doesn’t look surprised by these answers, but his warm smile says he’s still glad to hear them. “Very well. Closed it is. And if any one of us find ourselves craving something outside of the relationship, we talk about it-- not least because we’ve been foregoing the use of condoms thus far.”

Sam nods in agreement even if he can’t imagine that happening. “What about the arrangement thing?” he asks. He’s been wondering that himself. Is he okay to be with dean alone? With Cas? Dean and Cas’s prior involvement makes that almost inevitable, but the rest, he doesn’t know.

To Sam’s surprise, it’s Dean who speaks. “I’d prefer it if any arrangement was game.”

Sam doesn’t miss the way Dean borrows his phrasing, like he needs a template to follow when talking about his feelings.

Cas’s eyebrows raise slightly. “And you would be okay with that?” he asks like it’s a challenge. “You’d be okay with the possibility of Sam and I being together without you present? Okay with you and Sam being intimate without me as a buffer?”

Dean nods once, hard, and looks away. “Yeah.”

And Sam knows that’s all they’re going to get out of his brother for a bit, so he says, “Same. You and Dean were together before this, so--” He holds his hands out. “What about you?”

“I’m quite alright with that,” Cas says. “But are you sure you’re comfortable with the possibility of being intimate with me? Just me?”

That thought sends a wave of heat through Sam’s gut, the product of freshman fantasies gone awry. Suddenly, he _wants_. He wants Cas in a way that he’d only thought he could want his brother before now-- wants in body and spirit and everything in between. He wants to learn his secrets and understand his habits. “I would,” he agrees.

Silence falls. Even if Dean doesn’t say anything this time, his leg bounces anxiously up and down, like he’s ten seconds from begging for a subject change or walking away entirely.

“I have one additional request.” Cas looks down at the floor as his hands move to clasp in front of him. For once he seem something other than experienced and in control. He’s nervous, not an expression Sam’s ever seen him wear, and it instantly sends up red flags.

Cas takes a deep breath like he’s getting ready to jump. “I know it hasn’t been long at all, but this triad feels more permanent than anything I’ve been involved with in the past, and that scares me,” he says. He looks up to meet their eyes. “I’m older than both of you, at a different place in my life. There’s a myriad of ways this could derail, but I find myself wanting so badly to make it work.”

Cas’s words come slowly as he continues, “The two of you are… unique. In more ways than you will ever realize. Your bond is deeper than that of any siblings or partners I’ve met before. If either of you decide that this isn’t what you want-- that _I’m_ not what you want anymore, please tell me. Wanting out and not saying so only breeds resentment, and that’s a dangerous path to tread in a situation as precarious as ours.”

“Cas...” Sam starts. “We’re not just going to, to get tired of you.” He shakes his head.

Cas’s smile is softly sad, colored by years of experiences Sam can’t begin to guess. “You can’t know that, Sam,”

Suddenly, Cas isn’t the Cas of free-love and rebellious youth. Or at least not only that. He’s a man who’s known heartbreak and lived through his share of hardship. Every day Sam sees more and more of the man his brother fell in love with-- because he has no doubt that Dean loves him. He sees him in gentle hands and rusty laughter and questions about when they last ate.

“That’s not gonna’ happen,” Dean agrees quietly, and he must know at least part of the story causing the uncaracteristicaly sad tilt to Cas’s face, because he adds, “But you gotta’ trust that we’ll tell you if it does.”

Cas looks like he wants to trust the words, wants so badly to depend on them, but isn’t quite sure how to let himself fall. He makes grabby hands, beckoning them forward.

Dean goes, slowly, like he doesn’t want to break the moment. Cas pries the coffee from his hands, setting it out of harm's way before pulling the taller man in by the hips. Dean’s bare feet overlap Cas’s, more intimate than sex **,** and he doesn’t resist when Cas pulls him into a slow, soothing kiss.

Sam watches with rapt attention. Dean and Cas are like some form of living art-- beautiful in such complementary ways. The hard slop of Dean’s shoulders; the languid arch of Cas’s neck. The pendent cord black against Dean’s neck; the silver filigree of Cas’s rings. The weight of two lifetimes twineing together in clothes scattered on the floor and classic rock records alongside new wave.

The hand between Dean’s shoulder blades flicks in invitation.

Sam pushes off the counter and strides over to press himself to Cas’s side. He wraps one arm around Cas’s shoulders and uses the other to tilt his face until he can kiss down his neck. The noise Cas makes in response is too beautiful to be called pornographic.

“I have papers to grade,” he says breathily, and it’s not a protest, not really; more just a statement of facts.

“Do it later,” Dean says, ever the master of procrastination. “Sammy can help you.”

“I notice you’re not volunteering,” Cas says as Sam nibbles on his ear.

“Not unless you want them graded on which one makes the most aerodynamic airplane,” Dean agrees.

Cas makes a noise that starts as a noise of offense and ends in a groan when Dean grinds his hips against Cas’s.

“Papers can wait,” Cas says hurriedly. His hands can’t decide what they want to do more-- take off Dean’s shirt or unbutton his own waistcoat.

Sam smiles into hair that smell of organic herbal shampoo and thinks that maybe his definition of love is changing, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Guys. GUYS. It's been nearly two years, but here it finally is. See, I told you it'd be here... eventually. Part three is also in the pipes, and theoretically that won't take another two years. God, let's sure as hell hope I'm not in grad school by the time I get part three out. *crosses fingers*
> 
> Also, sorry about the shift to present tense in this part. Since I wrote Radius of Convergence, I've learned that my style works better in present tense.


End file.
